Its Time To Discuss Star Wars Again.
The Rebel Scum fan website is reporting that in recent presentations at London’s Toy Fair event, Lucasfilm marketing partner TLC Marketing revealed once again that Lucasfilm plans to release Episodes 4, 5 and 6 on DVD format in October or November of 2004. This is just one more piece in a puzzle that’s now growing very large and surprisingly clear. Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox aren’t commenting on the rumors about the DVD release of the original trilogy, but our industry sources are just giving us too much independent confirmation that the release is in the works. We feel very confident now that it’s the real deal – that the Star Wars films ARE finally coming to DVD later in 2004.
Just to update you, we’ve heard a variety of rumors in terms of what might be included on the set, but the rumours seem to indicate that they’ll be released as a 4-disc set, with 3 movie discs (1 for each film) and a disc of bonus materials, much like last year’s Indiana Jones Trilogy DVD release.
Lucas has repeatedly said not to expect the original versions of the films on DVD, so we’re betting on the much-rumored “Archive Editions”, which would basically be the Special Editions released in the 1990s, only with further tweaks, changes, enhancements and additions to bring them more into line with the new prequels. Still, the list of specific changes that’s been circulating around the Net for a few months reads more like a fanboy wishlist, so it should probably be considered dubious at best. I suspect we won’t know anything more until the titles are officially announced.
Speaking of that, IF this DVD release is really happening (and keep in mind that for all our sources – and the widespread information being reported around the Net – this is STILL only a rumor), Lucasfilm would probably want to announce the release sooner rather than later, to give retailers and marketing partners enough time to gear up for it. It would easily be the biggest DVD release of 2004, and arguably one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) releases of all time for the format. By comparison, Lucasfilm announced the November 4th, 2003 DVD release of the Indiana Jones Trilogy on May 5th of last year (the street date was later moved up to October 21st). That’s 6 months of lead time. If Lucasfilm holds true to that with the announcement of Star Wars, assuming a September-November window (has as been rumored), that would mean that we could reasonably expect the official announcement sometime between now and May.
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